GENERAL AND SPECIFIC FEATURES. 143 



specific; names, and not by their odors. It is just as easy 

 to write tlie distinctive name " Black Bass " as the general 

 name " Bass." 



Bass is a very vague term at best, meaning one thing in 

 one part of the country, and a totally different thing in 

 another. Along the eastern coast it means a Striped Bass 

 {Roecus lineafus), or a Sea Bass {Chifroprisfes atrarius) ; in 

 Florida it means a Channel Bass [Sciccnops ocellatufi) ; in 

 the west it may be either a Black Bass {Microptevus), a 

 Rock Bass (Ambloptites rupestris), a White Bass (Roecus 

 chrysops), or a Calico Bass (Fomoxys nigromocidatus) ; 

 while in Otsego County, New York, it means an Otsego 

 Bass (Coregonus clupeiformis var. otsego), which is not a 

 Bass at all but a white fish. 



Then, again, some of these correspondents write of the 

 real Black Bass, meaning usually M. dolomieu, the small- 

 mouthed species, seeming to imply that the other species is 

 not real, or at least is not the Black Bass, but something 

 else — a kind of pseudo variety. Others in writing of the 

 large-mouthed species, 31. sabnoides — owing to its former 

 name, 31. nigricans — have called it the real Black Bass^ 

 under the impression that as it was named nigricans — /. e., 

 black — the other species must be some other color, and 

 could not be the simon-pure article. Now, one species is 

 not more real than the other; the small-mouthed Bass is 

 regarded as the type species because it was the first to be 

 described by a naturalist, and given a specific and generic 

 name. 



The term " Black Bass," then, is distinctive, and should 

 always be used when alluding to the genus generally. 

 The different species should be mentioned as the small- 

 mouthed Black. Bass or the large-mouthed Black Bass, as 



